The BBC’s Coverage of October 7 Was on a Par With Its Genocide Denial Throughout the Holocaust in Gaza

No Mention of the Hannibal Doctrine, No Mention of Israel’s 17 Year Siege of Gaza, No Mention of Israel’s Policy of ‘Mowing the Lawn’ – For the BBC History Began on October 7

Tzipi Hotoveli Interview With Piers Morgan

Dear Tim Davie,

You should be congratulated on your coverage of the second anniversary of October 7. Once again, you have faithfully acted as the Foreign Office’s Obedient Servant. I compliment you on your skill in manipulating language in an attempt to erase from memory the Genocide in Gaza.

‘Genocide’ is a word that the BBC decided to ban despite every human rights organisation, from Amnesty to B’tselem  and the UN’s own Commission concluding that genocide was taking place.

Not only did the BBC not use the word Genocide but it interrupted guests at least 100 times when they dared to mention the word. As the Media Monitoring Report on your Double Standards asked

Why has the BBC downplayed genocide allegations over 100 times while omitting Israeli genocidal statements such as Netanyahu’s Amalek reference cited by the ICJ?’ 

It’is a good question but I suspect that you don’t have an answer which isn’t economical with the truth. Either way it shows whose side you were on.

In July 2024 an article in The Lancet estimated that the true figure of Palestinians killed, after 9 months, was 186,000 direct and indirect deaths. After 24 months that figure would be 496,000. However given the starvation blockade by Israel since March 2025 the numbers may be considerably higher.

Dr Gideon Polya estimated in January 2025 that the true figure of direct and indirect deaths may have been 553,000.

This tallies with the number that Israel’s Ambassador to London, Tzipi Hotoveli estimated might need to be killed, 600,000, when she was interviewed by Piers Morgan in October 2023.

So what does the BBC do after two years of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza?   It focuses its attention on the Israeli ‘victims’ of October 7.

It is as if a history of the Warsaw Ghetto were to focus on a sympathetic portrait of the Nazis who died in the Uprising rather than the Jews who died in the fighting.

It is clear where the BBC’s sympathies lie.  With the modern day Nazis who killed the human animals occupying Gaza Ghetto and who sought to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

Throughout the Gaza holocaust the BBC has deliberately ignored the genocidal statements of intent by Israeli ministers such as Amichai Eliyahu who first called for a nuclear bomb to be dropped on Gaza and in May 2025 called for food reserves in Gaza to be bombed. "They need to starve," he said.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on 6 May 2025 told settler representatives that

Within a few months, we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed

But if the BBC minimised Palestinian suffering it magnified that of Israel. In your coverage you repeatedly said ‘about 1200 Israelis were killed’. In fact 1,139 died according to Bituah Leumi, Israel's social security agency.

Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says (Full with subtitles)

Of the Israelis who died just one baby, Mila Cohen, died and that was accidental. Compare that to the thousands of Palestinians babies murdered. Approximately 400 soldiers and police were killed. Not once has the BBC mentioned that one-third of those killed on October 7 were legitimate military targets.

About 750 civilians died. However it is clear that the majority of them were killed by Israel itself which put the Hannibal Directive into operation as early as 7.18 a.m. when an order was issued to despatch a Zik, an attack drone, against soldiers at Erez Junction.

The Hannibal Directive says that if a soldier is in danger of being captured he should be killed. It was employed throughout October 7. Is there a reason that the BBC has never, not once, mentioned the term Hannibal Directive even though Israeli papers have frequently discussed it?  This is news management worthy of Pravda.

The only survivor of a house in Kibbutz Be’eri that was shelled by an Israeli tank, Yasmine Porat, told Israel’s Kan Radio that 13 Israeli hostages were killed by Israeli security forces. She also said that she and other civilians were treated humanely by the Palestinian fighters.

Israeli State Radio 15.10.23. (jpg)

Tank fires on Israeli civilian home in Kibbutz Be'eri, 7 October 2023

In Samantha Simmons broadcast on October 7 she mentioned the attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, where 101 Israelis died.  What was not mentioned was the fact, (Ha'aretz 7.7.24) that Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram gave orders for a tank to fire on a house holding 14 hostages including Yasmine Porat.  The same happened throughout Kibbutz Be’eri but the BBC thought that such matters might confuse people and its message that the October 7 attack was unprovoked. 

Ha'aretz’s Nir Hasson quoted a resident of Be’eri, Tuval, who spoke about the ‘difficult decisions’ of Israeli commanders which:

 Include(d) shelling houses with all their occupants inside in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages... The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed.”

Why has none of this been mentioned by the BBC?

The implication is clear. The Israelis who died at Be’eri, one-seventh of all Israeli civilians killed, were killed by Israeli tanks.

Video released by Israeli army shows helicopters firing indiscriminately on 7 October

Sourced from YNet

This is how so many cars at the music festival ended up destroyed. Apache helicopters!
FYI : The IDF collected all the destroyed cars and arranged them one month after the incident pic.twitter.com/sHVL4YIMIT

— Syrian Girl (@Partisangirl) November 9, 2023

The lie that October 7 was the beginning of history is best illustrated by the Israeli phrase that it was moving the lawn (or grass) in Gaza. As John Feffor of the Institute of Policy Studies explained:

Ever since it withdrew its settlements in 2005, Israel has periodically attacked Gaza. This shelling of locations throughout the narrow strip of land gave rise to the Israeli expression “mowing the lawn.” In other words, Israel was bombing Gaza on a regular basis to “maintain order.”

Razan al-Najar 

In other words Israel has periodically attacked Gaza with overwhelming force every few years in order to ensure that Gazans understood who was in charge.  Attacks by Israel occurred in 2008/9 (Operation Cast Lead), 2012 (Pillar of Defence), 2014 (Protective Edge), the Great Return March (March 2018) and May 2021. Thousands of Palestinians were killed and injured in these attacks so the BBC pretence that nothing had occurred before October 2023 is an egregious lie.

The Great Return March of 2018 was completely peaceful but Israeli snipers fired from earth banks thousands of rounds which killed about 300 people and injured thousands (they had been told to fire at knee caps in order to deliberately disable as many as possible). This was symbolised by the deliberate murder of the unarmed Razan al-Najar, a 20 year old medic.

Likewise there was no mention of the Apache helicopters which Israel used throughout the day to fire on any vehicle returning to Gaza or thought likely to do so. There is abundant evidence that their pilots shot at everything that moved and killed the occupants of the cars, Israelis included.

Drone footage from the scene of the music festival shows the damaged cars before they were rearranged by the IDF. pic.twitter.com/qs6F9SZh3S

— Syrian Girl (@Partisangirl) November 9, 2023

 The Israeli military released drone footage showing hundreds of scorched and damaged cars moved from the Nova music festival, providing further evidence that Israeli forces likely killed many of their own on 7 October, as RT reported on 6 November.  Hamas fighers were carrying light weapons which could not possibly have caused such damage.

Perhaps you can explain why the Australian Broadcasting Service can run a story ‘Israeli forces accused of killing their own citizens under the 'Hannibal Directive' during October 7 chaos’ but the BBC is incapable of doing so? Don’t worry I know the answer Tim which is that you were put into the BBC in order to ensure that you continued to function as the Voice of Israel.

I hesitate to ask why the figures of dead and injured from Gaza’s Health Ministry are always accompanied by a reference to Hamas-run, whereas the BBC never refers to Israeli propaganda as Likud-run. After all it is Israel which has consistently lied throughout the genocide, to the extent of barring reporters from entering Gaza and doing its best to kill those who are already there.

Israel murdered 15 Medics on 23 March whilst claiming that they had approached Israeli troops in unlit vehicles. When this was proved to be a lie, as video footage had been collected from one of the dead bodies, Israel claimed that it was all a ‘mistake’, an explanation that the BBC carried faithfully.

Under your genocide cleansing leadership the BBC pulled from ‘i’ player Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, a film starring a 13 year old Palestinian narrator Abdullah because his father was deputy Agriculture Minister in Gaza’s government, as if the sins of the father are those of the children.  No evidence has ever been produced that the father was a member of Hamas, not that that should have made any difference. At least he wasn’t a member of Religious Zionism.

And if one act of cowardice was not enough, you pulled Gaza: Doctors Under Attack because of concerns over impartiality.  Presumably it is BBC policy not to differentiate between Good and Evil. I can only assume that future BBC programmes on the Holocaust will include neo-Nazis and holocaust deniers being allowed equal time for the sake of ‘balance’.

Gaza’s genocide is a holocaust and the BBC has been an accomplice to that genocide.

Tony Greenstein

The BBC's Prostitute 'Journalists’ Led by Radio 2’s Harvey Cook LAUGHED AT BABIES BEING BLOWN UP at the NUJ Conference

BBC Delegates Did All They Could to Undermine Solidarity With the Palestinian Victims of Israel’s Genocide

Sky News investigates slaughter of Palestinian family fleeing fighting | Israel-Hamas War

The BBC has historically been pro-imperialist and pro-Zionist. I can remember in 1967 during the 6 Day War, the BBC’s correspondent in Israel, Michael Elkins could hardly contain his enthusiasm for Israel’s victory.

Throughout the troubles in Northern Ireland, which began because the Catholic population demanded civil rights after years of gerrymandering, the BBC made it clear it was on the side of the British army and the Unionists.

During the current genocide in Gaza the BBC has bent over backwards to whitewash and exonerate Israel’s military. When the BBC showed Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone it immediately ran into a campaign by the Israel lobby over the fact that the father of its narrator, Abdullah 14, was the Deputy Minister for Agriculture in Gaza’s administration.

Harvey Cook lobbying i.e. threatening the NUJ Executive

Even if this were true, then so what? Even if his father had been a member of Hamas why should that have had any bearing his son fronting the program? The BBC thought differently and quickly bent the knee to the Zionists and their lackies in the British government like the despicable Lisa Nandy.

If this was not bad enough, the BBC then used the censorship of this film as an excuse not to broadcast another film, Gaza: Medics Under Fire. The fact that all of Gaza’s hospitals have been bombed and attacked and most of them destroyed hasn’t bothered the genocide supporters at the BBC at all.

Harvey Cook lobbying i.e. threatening the NUJ Executive

Anything that is seen as sympathetic to the Palestinians gets censored by the BBC management, led by its Tory Director General Tim Davie.

Harvey Cook and the rest of the BBC Delegation Found the Plight of This Child Highly Amusing

Contrast this with Sky TV’s coverage. It did an excellent expose of Israel’s  calculated murder of 6 year old Hind Rajab who was murdered by a tank along with the two Red Crescent paramedics sent to rescue her.

When Israel executed 15 Red Crescent medics and then lied about it, claiming that they had approached Israel’s military ‘suspiciously’ with their lights off, the BBC went out of its way to whitewash this appalling war crime. Even when the footage that was later discovered on one of the bodies proved that the ambulances had their lights on and that they had been murdered in cold blood. 

The BBC Delegation to the NUJ Conference

The idea of the BBC labelling what happened for what it was, clear and calculated murder is unimaginable. Instead its headline was 'Professional failures' led to killing of Gaza medics, IDF inquiry says. giving prominence to yet more Israeli lies. One wonders if Russia had executed 15 Red Cross workers whether they would have carried Russia’s explanation without comment?

‘Professional failures’ might be used about a doctor who made mistakes resulting in the death of a patient. It implies that the death was accidental, not the cold-blooded killing of Red Crescent workers.

When the Israeli version of events was shown to be a lie, did the BBC come out and say so? Not a bit of it. Its headline was ‘Israel admits mistakes over medic killings in Gaza’.

Presumably the Nazi massacres at Lidice and Oradour-sur-Glane were also mistakes and the result of ‘professional failures’. How can an ambush in which firing could be heard for 5 minutes and when the ambulances were crushed and buried in a shallow grave, rather than being handed over to the Red Crescent, be termed a ‘mistake’? 

Omar and Omar - the BBC found their murder highly amusing

This is Goebbels style propaganda but it is consistent with the bias of the BBC over decades of reporting the war crimes of the Apartheid State.

Or take the title of its video ‘Israel admits wrongly killing 15 emergency workers in Gaza due to “professional failures” This was not an accidental death but deliberate, cold blooded murder. An ambush. Imagine the BBC saying ‘Israel murders 15 emergency workers in Gaza.’ It is not something that the BBC and its Zionist Gatekeeper Raffi Burg could even contemplate.

Israel admits wrongly killing 15 emergency workers in Gaza due to “professional failures” 

Owen Jones asked whether the BBC ‘journalists’ were on crack. The sad truth is that the ‘prostitute journalists’ responsible for the BBC’s coverage were not under the influence of drugs. They have no such excuse. The BBC sees its prime duty as being loyalty to British foreign office policy.

These premature babies were taken out of the incubators at Al Shifa hospital and left to die by the IDF - their bodies eaten by wild animals - highly amusing to Harvey Cook

It’s a good job that the BBC weren’t on the German side during the war otherwise they would have described Auschwitz as a ‘professional mistake’. 

It is no accident that when the National Union of Journalists held its conference in Blackpool from April 25-27 the BBC’s delegates, led by Harvey Cook and Stefan Cholewka, the Manchester delegate, did their best to block all resolutions supporting the Palestinians.

I was approached by a delegate to the conference, who asked to remain anonymous who wrote the following piece:

Kafka meets Orwell at the national union of journalists

The NUJ delegates at their conference in Blackpool laughed at the thought of babies being blown up in Gaza. When challenged if he thought it funny one said "the more the better."

These delegates included senior BBC presenters such as: Harvey Cook, who describes himself as a news reader at BBC radio two and radio  Kent.

These delegates who represented several sections, but were mostly based in London, had spent the entire conference voting down every resolution that in anyway supported Palestine.

Whenever they lost a vote they would bring it back with a point of order or vote clause by clause to neuter it. The NUJ is a small union of under 20,000 and is haemorrhaging members. It is well known in union circles that those in the BBC sections have threatened to leave in block if the union supports Palestine in any way. Obviously some BBC workers value their jobs more than opposing Genocide!

Manchester delegate, Stefan Cholewka, said:

" it was like something out of Kafka's, the trial."

When the NUJ executive ruled out of order yet another attempt to block discussion on Gaza, Harvey Cook approached them, whispered something to them, and magically, they changed their minds.

Many times, pro Palestinian delegates were not allowed to speak by time being called on debate. When one delegate from Manchester spoke to tell the conference what the pro Israel lobby had said, he was ruled out of order.

This delegate was then intimidated  by a member of the BBC world service, and later by an NUJ executive member called, Nick McGowan - Lowe. (this is one person not Manchester United's new midfield.)

Worse was to follow. The delegate was then called into a room by the then union assistant General Secretary, Seamus Dooley. No prior notice was given. No legal representation allowed. The unions legal officer took notes but the delegate was given no such luxury. Charges were then brought against the delegate by (the executive) rather than any named accusers.) The executive are therefore acting as judge and jury.

One of the charges is that the delegate may in the future write an article about the conference. Think for a moment.. : a journalist is charged with, at some time in the future, writing an article about journalists, at a conference for... journalists...

Opening the conference, union President, Natasha Hirst, had said:

" healthy debate is crucial to strengthening the unions work."

The BBC's Delegation to the NUJ Conference

An article in The Socialist, Heated debates on Gaza reporting in journalists’ union confirms the above account:

Tony Greenstein

Motion 102 from the London Magazine branch noted a November 2024 letter from over 230 members of the media, including 101 BBC journalists, that criticised the BBC, Sky and ITV reporting of the Gaza horrors.

Some BBC delegates, with backing from the right wing of the National Executive Council (NEC), successfully moved to bring the motion back to standing orders, claiming the motion broke NUJ rules. London Magazine members agreed to remove the contentious paragraph but BBC London branch still opposed the motion. They falsely claimed that the London Magazine motion was an attack on the integrity and work of BBC journalists.

Moving the motion, London Magazine branch chair and Socialist Party member Niall Mulholland emphasised that in fact the motion was an act of solidarity with BBC journalists trying to do their job and follow the NUJ’s Code of Conduct, in the context of senior management pressure and editorial decisions. Niall quoted from the open letter: “The BBC did not make clear when Israel is a perpetrator or relay the historical context of events before 7 October 2023.” An oppositional amendment was passed but a significant minority supported 102.

See also:

Fact or Fiction: Israel needs fake nurses to justify killing Gaza babies

Israeli killings of Palestinian children 'an extremely dark place in history', says UN

‘They killed her twice’: Hind Rajab’s mother mourns girl, 6, found killed days after being trapped under Israeli fire

Open Letter to the BBC's Director General - Tim Davie - Why I Shall Not Be Paying My TV Licence & Why You Should Not Pay Yours

 What the BBC Means By Impartiality is NOT Broadcasting South Africa’s Case for Genocide But instead Broadcasting Israel’s Defence!

Pilger on BBC

tim.davie@bbc.co.uk 

Dear Mr Davie,

On 11 January the International Court of Justice heard South Africa’s application that

‘acts and omissions by Israel . . . are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . . to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”

and that this was in clear contravention of the United Nation’s Convention on Genocide.

Paragraphs 101-107 of the Application gave numerous examples of the Genocidal Intent of Israeli military leaders, senior politicians and also their effect amongst Israel’s soldiers.

For example Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant’s declaration of 9 October that

International Court of Justice at The Hague

I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,”

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu implored his listeners:

you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible." with reference to I Samuel 15:1-34

"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass"

Viewers saw Irish KC Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh's powerful closing speech in South Africa case. All independent observers are agreed that South Africa’s case was overwhelming.

3 Israeli hostages die because Israeli used banned chemical weapons, poison gas, to try and kill Hamas militants

As Nimer Sultany wrote in The Guardian:

The powerful case brought by South Africa against Israel at the international court of justice under the genocide convention is a wake-up call for many western governments and media outlets that uncritically supported Israel’s savage war.

Maayan Sherman, mother of an Israeli soldier who was one of three hostages found dead in a Gaza tunnel in December, says they were killed when Israel flooded the tunnel with poison gas. She compared his death to the gassing of Jews in the Holocaust, calling it 'premeditated… pic.twitter.com/Wykk9Czhrf

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 18, 2024

I say viewers, but of course not those who watch BBC because you took a decision, in the interests of ‘balance’, not to broadcast the case that South Africa  was presenting. Instead you decided, in line with previous practice, only to broadcast Israel’s defence the next day.

ICJ: Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh's powerful closing statement in South Africa case against Israel

BBC’s viewers were therefore unable to judge for themselves the case that Israel was responding to, which is exactly what you intended, because in your view the people of Gaza have no case.

The murder of 15,000+ children, 120 journalists, innumerable doctors and health workers, the attacks on all of Gaza’s hospitals – all on the pretext that Hamas was using them as their military bases counted for nothing because the BBC is nothing if not a spokesperson for British and US foreign policy. Their view and yours is that however many civilians are murdered, South Africa’s case is ‘meritless’.

If this was China or Russia then it would be a different story. If Russia had said that the Ukrainian resistance was hiding behind civilians or using hospitals as bases then the BBC would be the first to call this out for what it was. But as a failed Conservative candidate you know where your loyalties lie.

Those who wanted to listen to South Africa’s charges had to turn to Al Jazeera. The BBC decided that the injustice that Post Office managers have experienced was more important.

Israel’s ‘defence’ consisted primarily of accusations that South Africa was perpetrating a ‘blood libel’, i.e. ‘anti-Semitism’.

If the BBC was going to broadcast Israel’s defence then you were under a duty to broadcast the South Africa’s allegations of genocide. This is so elementary that it hardly needs stating.

They answered 🙄 pic.twitter.com/nGhsKV3HZF

— Born to misbehave💜🔥 (@equidistante_) January 16, 2024

The BBC's Lucy Williamson shows viewers the destruction in Kibbutz Be'eri but she never thinks to ask how Hamas caused it given they had no heavy weaponry

October 7 Breakout from Prison Gaza

The BBC has acted as the Voice of Israel. News coverage repeatedly goes back to the events of October 7 whilst carefully omitting the fact that Israeli tanks fired on houses in Kibbutz Be’eri killing both Israeli hostages and their Hamas captors.

The same is true of the Nova festival and the firing on cars escaping from the festival by Apache helicopters. All of this is ignored by the BBC which prefers to accept the Israeli version of what happened that day.

There is plenty of information on how Israel’s military took the decision to implement the Hannibal Directive and kill its own hostages, rather than allow them to be taken captive and exchanged for the Palestinian hostages that Israel holds.

The BBC, it seems, made sure viewers got a live-stream today of Israel's defence against genocide in Gaza but deprived viewers yesterday of South Africa's detailed case for accusing Israel of genocide.

I guess that counts as 'BBC balance'. https://t.co/yPZiYBonVG

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 12, 2024

See for example The Cradles’ How Israeli forces trapped and killed ravers at the Nova Festival, Ha’aretz’s Families of Israelis Killed in Be'eri Home Hit by IDF Tank on October 7 Demand Probe, Electronic Intifada’s Israeli child “burned completely” by Israeli tank fire at kibbutz.

🚨BREAKING: ISRAELI HOSTAGE EXPOSES DISTURBING ACCOUNT

In a shocking revelation, Israeli hostage Yasmin Porat has raised disconcerting questions about the tragic events of October 7.

The Testimony:

In an exclusive interview, Porat disclosed that Israeli forces eliminated… pic.twitter.com/LkKSSWkGIO

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 23, 2023

Electronic Intifada and others published the interview with Yasmine Porat, a survivor of Kibbutz Be’eri but the BBC have never even referred to it or similar interviews.

While the eyes of the world were glued to the live images of South Africa’s trial against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), most Western media refused to broadcast the historic event. It is only the second time in the history of the Genocide Convention that one… pic.twitter.com/4H9MPF5rYy

— red. (@redstreamnet) January 11, 2024

Electronic Intifada’s article on how Israeli HQ ordered troops to shoot Israeli captives on 7 October, the Times of Israel’s IDF officer recounts ordering tank fire on Be’eri home during hostage standoff on Oct. 7 likewise made no impression on BBC coverage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza’s Palestinians.

Interview with Yasmine Porat on Kan's Haboker Hazeh radio program on 15 October 2023

Whilst information on how many if not most civilian deaths on October 7 is easily available, not least from the Israeli press, including interviews with the hostages, the BBC has done nothing to question the Zionist narrative that Israeli deaths on October 7 were solely the work of Hamas.

An Open Letter from Israelis to fellow Israelis demanding the truth about October 7^th at the end of October demanding an inquiry into the events of October 7 was ignored. They wrote:

Israel’s domestic and international rhetoric now contains something much more akin to Nazi extermination propaganda. 

We know what the purpose of this propaganda is. More than 8,500 indigenous Palestinian children, women, and men have been exterminated – and the number rises as we write. Many are trapped under the rubble of their homes, dying slowly. Others are facing thirst, starvation, and infectious diseases. At the same time, senior Israeli figures, even our president, keep howling that there are ‘no innocent civilians’ in Gaza. 

Make no mistake, what Israel is doing in Gaza now will haunt Israelis for decades. Now is the time to make sure all Israelis understand this. And this understanding should start with full disclosure about the events of October 7, 2023.

Not one word has left the lips of BBC interviewers about the Hannibal Directive despite widespread discussion in the Israeli press such as for example Ha’aretz’s 'Unlawful, Unethical, Horrifying': IDF Ethics Code Author on Alleged Use of 'Hannibal Directive' During Hamas Attack’. In this article Asa Kasher, the philosopher who wrote the Israeli Military’s Code of Conduct, told how ‘allegations that the infamous operational order may have been used on October 7 must be investigated immediately’. The BBC is simply not interested in such facts.

I did a google search on the Hannibal Directive and BBC. I came up with nothing. I went to the BBC’s own site and searched on ‘Hannibal Directive’. The nearest I came up with was a story Hannibal Mejbri: Manchester United midfielder joins Sevilla on loan!

These omissions are not accidental but deliberate policy decisions by BBC News, under your direction. You are deliberately distorting and slanting the news in such a direction as to support Israel’s narrative that October 7 was an unprovoked attack as Hamas sought to indulge in murder and rape. Your claim of ‘balance’ is nothing but a lie.

As Jonathan Cook, a former Guardian journalist wrote in What the BBC fails to tell you about October 7:

‘It is journalistic malpractice for the media to still be repeating so credulously the Israeli military’s account….

Simply repeating that narrative without any caveats has by now reached the level of journalistic malpractice. And yet that is precisely what the BBC does night after night.

Just a cursory look at the wreckage in the various kibbutz communities that were attacked that day should raise questions in the mind of any good reporter. Were Palestinian militants in a position to actually inflict physical damage to that degree and extent with the kind of light weapons they carried?

And if not, who else was in a position to wreak such havoc other than Israel?

The BBC has repeated every lie that Israel’s propagandists have conjured up in order to excuse Israel’s genocidal orgy in Gaza. Instead you preferred to faithfully follow the Israeli narrative on October 7. See for example Israel Gaza: Hamas raped and mutilated women on 7 October, BBC hears and Hamas planned sexual violence as weapon of war - Israeli campaigner.

A counter-narrative such as that from Mondoweiss’s article Despite lack of evidence, allegations of Hamas ‘mass rape’ are fueling Israeli genocide in Gaza has made no impression on the BBC’s coverage.

We should be grateful that the Palestinian armed resistance in Gaza is taking such a toll of the Zionist SS militias that have wreaked such havoc. Like the German SS, their Israeli equivalent are more at home killing children and doctors than confronting armed guerrillas which is why they are having to cover up their real casualties, something which the BBC has also not reported on. The BBC has totally failed to cover the actions of the Palestinian resistance so the increasing number of Israeli casualties must come as something of a surprise.

The BBC reports on what appears to be an attempt by the IDF to rearrange guns and equipment they found in al-Shifa Hospital for embedded media.
pic.twitter.com/4uhMElsndz

— Richard Hall (@_RichardHall) November 17, 2023

The BBC has repeated the Israeli lie that Hamas operates from the hospitals of Gaza. There was just one exception to this – Ros Atkins BBC Fact Investigation into Israel’s justification for its attack on Al Shifa Hospital.

The BBC has always been the Voice of the British Establishment since the days when it refused to allow the Archbishop of Canterbury to broadcast during the 1926 General Strike because he favoured compromise. The Catholic Archbishop of Westminster was though allowed to broadcast because he held the strike to be sinful.

What the BBC fails to tell you about October 7:

It is journalistic malpractice for the media to still be repeating so credulously the Israeli military’s account of that day. My latest: https://t.co/EJKNpYYzUM pic.twitter.com/lp6DoBrZWG

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 2, 2023

As the BBC’s own history admits:

During the strike Reith vetted almost all the bulletins, while also dealing with the political aspects. He decided to refuse the Archbishop of Canterbury's request to appeal for an end to the strike; but allowed reporting of TUC statements. He helped Baldwin write a speech to the nation, which was delivered from Reith's home in Westminster.

Lord Reith’s own diary recalls a cabinet meeting on 11 May which took the view that the government should be able to say

that they did not commandeer [the BBC], but they know that they can trust us not to be really impartial”.

And this remains the situation today. Through control of the license fee and appointments such as yours, the government can maintain a pretence that the BBC is independent.

When the Miners were confronting the government its Director-General was writing the Prime Minister’s speech! And nothing had changed when it came to the Miner’s strike of 1984-5. During the Orgreave clashes it reversed footage of police attacks on the miners to show the miners attacking first. In 1991 the BBC apologised for having ‘inadvertently reversed’ the footage.

This was about as inadvertent as the editing out of laughter at Boris Johnson when he responded to a question about the importance of politicians telling the truth.

We have come to expect that the BBC will faithfully follow the establishment narrative whether it is on Israel, strikes or any other issue involving a challenge to the rich and powerful.

However what the BBC is not entitled to do is to expect us to pay for what is an Establishment propaganda station.

As the late, great John Pilger, who was banned from appearing on the BBC in his later years, said

the BBC is and has been the most refined propaganda service in the world.’

In his 2010 documentary, The War You Don’t See, John confronted Fran Unsworth, head of newsgathering at BBC News and ITV News editor in chief, David Mannion, on the failure of their reporters to challenge the lies that had come from government and intelligence sources without which the Iraq war could never have been prosecuted.

It was the collusion of the corporate media in refusing to challenge the misinformation from the Foreign Office and US State Department that led to the death of over a million Iraqis.

The same is true today. Israel could not get away with genocide in Gaza if the BBC and the corporate media did not give credence to their lies and excuses. It is as if you would have both sided Hitler’s claim that the invasion of Poland was a reaction to Poland’s attack on Germany.

BBC News, by giving credence to Israel’s absurd lies and cavorting with its propagandists, have blood on their hands. What you call ‘balance’ is neutrality between right and wrong and you always manage to come out on the wrong side.

In the Russia/Ukraine war you have had no difficulty taking sides, erasing the history of NATO’s provocations and its expansion into Eastern Europe in the process. This despite the promises made to Gorbachev that there would be no expansion.

But when it comes to Palestine you adopt a fake neutrality which in practice means you treat Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank as if it was a normal state of affairs. You never refer, unlike Al Jazeera, to the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied. You treat Israel’s racist colonial police force as if it was Dixon of Dock Green. 

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the great hero of the South Africa struggle against Apartheid, which the BBC did nothing to help when it continued to broadcast South Africa’s all-white cricket team, said:

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Tony Greenstein